Forced Upscaling is Personally Unplayable - Literally

[Aurelle_Deresnels]

I'm a disabled player. Without getting into medicine or biomechanics, the short version is that my muscles respond slower, and so I have to decide what I'm going to do faster / earlier in order to hit the key on time. Hesitation means KO for me, whether from any sort of processing delay or being told to follow the leader - I have to solve things myself, and I have to do it fast.

This means that I rely on split-second visual processing and crisp visual references in order to be effective in combat. I'd like to share some examples of what that means with specific mechanics, along with how the forced upscaling affects my system.

This is the Alphascape V4.0 (O12N) arena. I'm using this for demonstration instead of The Omega Protocol (Ultimate) (TOP) arena, since I have no desire to subject fellow players to wipes caused by visual issues in order to get to the arena floor relevant to later TOP mechanics, nor to try to take screenshots mid-pull in an Ultimate. (It's the same floor for the mechanics I want to use as examples, just Ultimate has a death wall with some very nice reference markers along the edge.)



See how under the glyphs, there's a thin line I'm standing on top of? That is the reference line for definitively avoiding the third hit of Wave Repeater in TOP, while being in a good position to step into the AOE and thus avoid the fourth hit. The thicker line nearby separating the glyph sets is not safe, since the third hit includes it. And the glyphs move, so they're not guaranteed to be around the angle you need in the arena.

Oh, and in the first appearance of Wave Repeater (which very strongly encourages this positioning), the arena is lit to match the second phase of Alphascape V4.0 (Savage). The reference line is still findable, but it requires both knowing what to look for and crisp rendered visuals.

This, relative to the waymark, is the central side of the Mid Glitch safespot for the light party stack section of TOP's Party Synergy. (Right on the furthest edge from the center, which is currently less clear due to the forced bloom.)



Move slightly forward or to either side, and you'll eat an AOE. Move slightly back and you'll buy yourself some leeway on your own precision... at the expense of your tether partner's leeway before violating Mid Glitch. To reliably be safe while leaving my partner the room to do the same, I aim to stand just slightly back from the edge of the waymark, like this.



There are several other TOP mechanics that require similarly precise positioning, and even orientation, so players learn these relative to the waymarks accordingly. I won't go into them, just note that this is a recurring expectation.

In combat, I don't have time to stare at screenshots for these references. I have to keep my eyes focused on not just the screen, but the right part of the screen for what I'm currently doing - which means finding the exact reference from the general location in a split second, and being able to line it up with my character's feet in motion.

How am I supposed to do that when the game keeps blurring like this, especially around my character? (This isn't some outrageously underpowered system or high resolution either - basic 1080p on an Intel i7-10700 + 16 GB RAM + GeForce 2060 Super (8 GB), which is a step up from the minimum recommended system specifications.) Switching to DLSS instead of the FSR I recorded on doesn't help.

Edited to add: Some readers have asked for a screenshot of the issue, in order to distinguish it from video compression artifacts. While screenshots are difficult to time and unable to convey the frequency of the problem, I shall oblige. Here is a completely unedited screenshot from shortly before I tried the video route:



Cropped to my character, who is rendered blurry:



For comparison, a similar crop to nearby furniture:



(End edit.)

The blurring obscures precise references, delaying my finding them and thus leading to me failing mechanics. Plus, it also makes my brain think it's lost focus on the screen, prompting it to look at the blurry area and attempt to refocus by reflex. (Since my eyes are already correctly focused and it's the image that is inherently blurry, this of course fails.) This results in eyestrain from the frequent attempts, distraction from being pulled out of what I should be looking at, and of course more mechanic failures from not looking in the right place.

This is obviously untenable for raiding, as much as I'd like to do Arcadion (Savage) and Futures Rewritten (Ultimate). But there's something more visually demanding than Ultimate for me: learning new zones and new instanced duties of any kind, especially going in without guides and POV videos.

I can study a Savage or Ultimate to the point of mapping out the whole arena and a complete timeline of exactly where to look, along with analyzing every animation and debuff for key features, before going into the instance - and that will enhance the experience rather than diminish it. Some mechanics even allow me to remove the load from my eyes by using sound cues. I can't do any of that with story duties, because the guides will have some degree of spoilers if they exist at all. (And the story duties often lean more on speed than high-end content, because they can't use party coordination or heavy planning mechanics.)

I haven't started the Dawntrail MSQ yet because I can't see the game properly. All I've been doing for combat since Dawntrail Early Access started is story duties I already know, so that I have both the greater lenience of the easier difficulties and my pre-existing visual plans for each duty. And even with that, I'm failing mechanics far more often than I should be.

(The forced bloom also is a serious issue for me, but that is already accepted as a bug so I needn't rehash it.)

No one who can clear an Ultimate should ever have to worry about their ability to do MSQ. This is absurd. For the love of Hydaelyn, Square, let us turn the graphics upscaling off entirely.

Yes, turning off upscaling can mean a performance hit. But if you give us a robust set of graphics settings to turn up or down, players will make graphics choices that make sense for them. For some players, some of the time, that will mean accepting a very low frame rate in order to have the perfect Group Pose screenshot at a high resolution. For other players, that will mean accepting many graphical simplifications in order to have a very high frame rate, whether as a personal preference or for their character's combat performance.

Personally, I try to find and leave up the settings that most help me with visual clarity, then start turning down the rest until I have a steady 60 FPS even in busy areas. (Which should be entirely doable on a system above recommended specifications!) My brain will fill in a lot of graphical details for immersion purposes, so I really don't get value out of leaving the "pretty" settings up. Even before Dawntrail, this game was the most graphically demanding one I played by a significant margin, so it would be poor budgeting for me to try to stick to the top of the line in graphics cards.

To those who are enjoying the graphical update and like the "pretty" settings turned up, I wish you well. Your enjoyment doesn't hurt anyone. I'm just trying to get the right option set for me, so I can see the game properly.

[GrizzlyTank]

FSR 100 and dynamic stuff disabled seems to be the closest to default you can get.

I also personally disable Anti-Aliasing. Seeing those edges brings me comfort that i don't need glasses.

Also disable radial blur if you want to remove the screen-wide blur that happens when using abilities.

[CidHeiral]

Forgive me if I missed it in your post but what is your Anti-Aliasing set to? The motion blur issue drove me insane as well until I switched to FXAA which seems to have largely resolved it.

[lolnotacat]

let us turn the graphics upscaling off entirely.

Seconded. I'm not disabled so I don't have the physical issues, but I hate the forced upscaling. The blurring is atrocious and ruins the improved environment textures that were introduced with the update. I'm also pretty sure that this is the main culprit behind the numerous reports of motion sickness.

I have a 5600x with a 3070 and 32GB of RAM. I do not need upscaling for a good framerate, even at 1440p. It absolutely worsens the experience.

OP, as a sidenote, I've actually had a little better luck switching to FSR. Give that a try and play with the settings. Forced DLSS is just a horrible experience right now. Keep in mind it won't fix the problem entirely, but it does improve it.

[Aurelle_Deresnels]

FSR 100 and dynamic stuff disabled seems to be the closest to default you can get.

I also personally disable Anti-Aliasing. Seeing those edges brings me comfort that i don't need glasses.

Also disable radial blur if you want to remove the screen-wide blur that happens when using abilities.

All of those are good suggestions! I'm using almost exactly that, though I tried Anti-Aliasing both Off and FXAA, and I like the FXAA slightly better for now.

Forgive me if I missed it in your post but what is your Anti-Aliasing set to? The motion blur issue drove me insane as well until I switched to FXAA which seems to have largely resolved it.

Haha, I maybe should have listed my full settings in my initial post, or at least mentioned that I scroll through them in the demonstration video!

[Kiet]

Forgive me if I missed it in your post but what is your Anti-Aliasing set to? The motion blur issue drove me insane as well until I switched to FXAA which seems to have largely resolved it.

Not the OP, but I still get motion blur with FXAA. And the game doesn't look very good with it.

Now I'm not an expert on these technical things, but I've play many other games with anti aliasing on without any issues. If there's motion blurring there's usually a setting to turn off the motion blur that's completely separate from the general antialising. It's been many years since I last felt physically ill because of motion blurring, FFXIV's graphics settings and the lack of customization options is shockingly outdated.

[CidHeiral]

Haha, I maybe should have listed my full settings in my initial post, or at least mentioned that I scroll through them in the demonstration video!

Ah, I looked at your video but not to the very end, my mistake. Yeah if it's still happening on FXAA I'm not sure what the fix would be. I thought having FSR at 100 effectively disabled it but perhaps not.

Not the OP, but I still get motion blur with FXAA. And the game doesn't look very good with it.

Now I'm not an expert on these technical things, but I've play many other games with anti aliasing on without any issues. If there's motion blurring there's usually a setting to turn off the motion blur that's completely separate from the general antialising. It's been many years since I last felt physically ill because of motion blurring, FFXIV's graphics settings and the lack of customization options is shockingly outdated.

Totally agree. I've never had any kind of visual issues with games but the constant back and forth between the image being blurry and not blurry really gave me a headache to the point where I couldn't enjoy the game until I switched to FXAA. I can't think of any other game I've played with this issue. I usually don't use DLSS in games because I think it makes them look like blurry crap in general, but even then it doesn't usually make them look blurrier when in motion. It's a very strange issue indeed.

[DiaDeem]

Oh, yeah.

Try this:




Set your 3D Resolution Scaling bar to 99 instead of 100.

It'll be even more noticeable if you open the images on new tabs, even more noticeable if you do it in your own game, and evern more noticeable if you play in 1440p or 4K, since I'm playing at 1080p
Why is this happening? I have no idea, but don't kill your AA for the sake of some weird scaling issue.

Hope this helps someone!

[Nitelancer]

I play at 1080p. I changed upscaling to FSR and changed scaling from 100 to 99. It fixed it for me, otherwise, it would be unplayable.

[CidHeiral]

I tried that for a bit but the image looked so overly sharpened it bothered me as well just in a different way.